Identity Crisis in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 785 Words

A theme that Rhys uses throughout her novel was identity crisis. The main female characters in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette depended on her force marriage husband Rochester to help her show her identity but instead both of their identities were disrupted in the novel leaving Antoinette fighting alone with a daunting question: â€Å"Who she were?† Antoinette fails to gain her identity, despite her struggle as a Creole woman in the face of racial and cultural rejection. We first see Antoinette identity when she see herself in Tia, who through a stone at Antoinette. â€Å"We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass† (Rhys, 24). For example, Antoinette sense of self identification with Tia can be seen with the mirror image. As a Creole woman living in the English colony of Jamaica, Antoinette soon realize that both the English and Caribbean society consider her as an outsider – one who is not within an enclosure boundary which she is composed. â€Å"So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all† (Rhys, 67). Rhys described Antoinette as a Creole meaning she is neither black nor white but between the line of slave (the Caribbean) and Europe (slave master), where decolonization was in effect, creating new identities and roles. Making Antoinette uncertain of her identity and her belonging Which destroyed her position as a women leaving her without an personalShow MoreRelatedEssay Colonising Within the Marriage in Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea1153 Words   |  5 PagesMarriage in Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea      Ã‚   Jean Rhys complex text, Wide Sargasso Sea, came about as an attempt to re-invent an identity for Rochesters mad wife, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, as Rhys felt that Bronte had totally misrepresented Creole women and the West Indies: why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochesters wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought Id write a story as it might really have been. 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